Shake-down? The article is relatively light on details. However if Apple promised these payments and didn't go through with them it's a simple case of Apple not fulfilling their obligation.
We actually don't know what happened exactly because this is all just news articles, but having lived in SE Asia and a decent understanding of the culture... my point is that I could see it actually working out this way:
1. Indo: pay us a bunch of money
2. Apple: how much?
3. Indo: $X millions.
4. Apple: ok... pays them.
5. Indo: We actually want more and if you don't pay us, we will make it illegal
to carry an iphone and we will start arresting people.
6. Apple: screw you, thats a human rights violation and we won't stand for that.
One article on bloomberg [0] said there was only about 9,000 iphones that have been brought into the country so far and mostly hand carried. Apple has paid out $95m. The math isn't adding up.
It is lovely to see US people creating cute stories about their own companies in place of depicting the true reality of their corruption. Apple used (and probably still uses) children to assemble their iphones but some random on the internet think they stand for human rights. Amazing.
